City water valve boxes are often located on city streets. This location is advantageous to the city as the water valve boxes are easy to access and minimally impede residents of the area when maintenance or repair is required. However, in cooler climates that experience frequent frost, the location of the valve boxes becomes problematic. The valve box's hub is located beneath the frost layer that occurs in these colder climates, which results in the valve box staying relatively un-shifted by frost heave. However, the city street that the valve box is located on is much more prone to shifts due to the frost heave. As such, at certain times, the upper valve box may become exposed above the surface of the street. The climates that experience such frost heaves are also prone to snow falls, which require snowplows to clear the streets to allow for safe travel. When a snowplow hits an exposed valve box, there is the potential that the upper valve box may fracture rendering the valve inoperable, at which point the valve box must be repaired.
Conventional repair of city water valve boxes has generally been achieved in one way; digging up the surrounding area, removing and replacing the entire damaged valve box and filling in the hole. However, in practice, this often is labor intensive and can result in lengthy road closures.
Similarly, other underground pipes including, but not limited to, water, sewer and gas pipes experience similar frost heave in cooler climates. Though not exposed at the surface to damage, as are city water valve boxes, rocks in proximity to the underground pipe, shifting due to the heave, can damage and sever such pipes. Conventional repair of such pipe breaks involves: digging up the surrounding area, removing and replacing the damaged pipe section, and back-filling the hole. Such pipe breaks can result in significant utility service outages to residents.